Nathan is a Partner and Chief Talent Officer of Deloitte India. He is a member of the India leadership team and serves on the Talent Executive Leadership of the Asia Pacific Region. Nathan has over 30 years of experience in HR management, across diverse industries including Manufacturing, Services, Telecom, and Information Technology. He is an industry leader, mentor and an advocate of ethical leadership and developing future leaders through coaching. He has vast experience in building and leading high-performance teams in both multinational and Indian organizations.

In an interview with SCIKEY, S.V. Nathan, Partner and Chief Talent Officer, Deloitte India, talks about how we all lead the same lives but have such different experiences and 5 things to focus on while building large teams:

How should an HR professional be adopting storytelling while hiring the right talent?

Stories are a powerful way of connecting to someone. There is a power to it that can help you engage and connect with the audience. It is 22 times more potent than a presentation deck or a normal conversation. It isn’t so much about the story per se, but more about how it is recounted or narrated. The right story said the right way can move the listeners. If you have these traits, of a good narrative and the narration style you can be a great storyteller. You cannot fake a story because it will then feel like flat soda.

 It is imperative to build an emotional connect and visual thinking so that the candidate feels connected to the organization.

Since you have vast experience across various industries in HR space, what do you think are the recurring problems across domains?

I believe there are recurring themes instead of problems in HR. We can divide them into three broad buckets. The first one is around acquiring the best talent, which is the single most crucial aspect of any organization. The next bucket will be how one manages to sustain this talents’ interest and connecting with them and their interests. It is not only about acquiring the right talent but also about how you will manage to keep them on board with you. If you get this one right, the third is how do you get them to remain motivated enough to be committed and loyal towards your company.

The most important thing that happens across any industry be it services, manufacturing etc. It is essential to work on how do you get people to enhance their skills and capabilities. These are constant across all industries that you may study.

What are the top 5 things to focus on while building such large teams?

– One of the first things that one must focus on is the culture. Companies aren’t about getting people in but also about building the right culture. You have to develop certain principles that will be of guidance to you even in the future. To encourage this, you need to look at how one builds the right in the people coming in. Think of your company as a large empty canvas and your values as a palette of different colours. Using this palette of values, you need to create the culture of the organization. To make sure that the colours stick, you need to get the right people on board. Mistakes will happen, yes but you must ensure that you learn to fix them in the first time and not let it happen again.

– Next is how do you help people learn? When you focus on learning, your people will realize that you are invested in them enough to teach them.

– Third is about how you grow your people which is not through designations and promotions but by helping them grow to become better managers and leaders of tomorrow.

– The fourth is about getting diverse members into a team. Not more of the same. And you someone in the team who is totally different, as this adds the inclusion dimension to your team. Personally I prefer more women in a team as they are far more productive at their jobs than men.

– The last refers to your connection with your people by caring for them. When you focus on this, there will be fewer consequences of exits. The first intended consequence is that on its own, you will build a brand. The unintended result is that you will be a talent magnet for people, wanting to join your firm.

You do a series called office truths on Twitter, tell us more about it!

Every day there are experiences that one undergoes at their workplace. Making use of storytelling skills that I have learnt, I tweet them online as one liners. So if I come across someone who has a bitter experience or a great experience at their workplace, I seek them out and share their wisdom online. I will write out a few words on this. When people read my tweets, they have said how they relate to this. This has taught me that all of us lead the same lives, but our experiences can differ in many ways. Office truths aren’t advice pieces but they are experiences put down to invoke positivity. It resonates with many.

What do you think of gender diversities while hiring talent and how to maintain a balance?

The world is not very kind to women. Most women who are bright and are looking for opportunities are denied this right at a very early stage. In my experience, I have seen that women are far more intelligent than men. Women appointed CEO’s of companies do much better than those with men as their CEO’s. There are a lot of studies that support this idea, and you can be assured that a female will do a much better job than a male. This is why gender is essential, but diversity is not only about gender. This doesn’t just hold from an economic standpoint but also from a societal standpoint where we will it will be a better place to live. “Women fall off the table during their childbearing months, and in the crucial times of child rearing as well. We therefore need to take care of women.” This loss of talent need to be maintained through a well researched hiring strategy. 

About SCIKEY:

SCIKEY Talent Commerce Platform is a Managed Talent Marketplace that enables employers globally, to build manage productive teams. With its online platform powered by AI platform-enabled services, Intelligent Automation and patented “SCIKEY MindMatch” algorithm; it simplifies how businesses contract or employ the best quality talent anywhere, while focusing on leveraging the talent mindset (psyche) as their prime competitive advantage.

SCIKEY’s mission is to provide the best cost, plenty of choices unmatched convenience to the employers across the globe, in employing or contracting the best quality talent On Premise, Offshore as well as in a Remote engagement.